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It is tradition for a representative of the Penn State Lehigh
Valley Faculty Senate to have the privilege of introducing the Commencement Speaker.
So, at this time I'd like to introduce Dr. Peter Behrens.
Dr. Behrens is an assistant professor of Psychology and presently serves as the Vice-Chair of
the Faculty Senate. Would you welcome - Dr. Peter Behrens.
Good Morning!
When the commencement committee asked me to introduce our speaker
for today I of course said, "yes,"
but also felt somewhat ill-at-ease, not being
completely familiar with her profession.
Now I'm not referring to the fact that she has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience
nor her research on obsessive-compulsive disorders
in adolescents. As a professor I know
how much we owe to research to day on brain structures
and the functions and how they relate to our course topics
in learning, child development and even
personality. No - the areas about
which I felt ill-informed are our speaker's many
television and movie credits. So, like any psychology
trained in research methods, I spent many hours
over the last week - between final exams -
Googling her and viewing YouTube segments
and episodes, thus discovering
her many credits - that she was a lead role
in a television series - Blossom, the young Bette
Midler in the movie Beaches,
and on the popular television series, The Big *** Theory.
which airs over the CBS network. Fortunately
the Big *** Theory's airtime is not the same as 30 Rock.
So, I could still enjoy watching the antics of Tina Fey!
So, now you know
just how talented, as I have found out, entertaining
and engaging a neuroscientist can be!
In all seriousness, it has been a delight
to make the acquaintance of Dr. Mayim Bialik,
our distinguished guest, who has successfully blended
left brain and right brain into her careers and
her life interests. Please join me in giving a warm
Penn State Lehigh Valley welcome to Dr. Mayim Bialik.
Thank you! Greetings Class of 2011,
Greetings to your proud family and your friends, thank you
Chancellor Williams, Thank you Penn State Lehigh Valley Advisory Board,
Thank you Alumni and thank you all of the esteemed faculty
who are here today. Let's start with some honesty.
I've never done this before, but I have hear my
share of speeches, that's for certain. Don't worry; I think we can do this.
I think I know exactly what to say to make this the funniest
the most inspiring, the most touching, the most
profound and the most significant speech you have ever heard.
Okay, that's not true! What is true, and this is the honest part,
is that was chosen to be here for a few reasons
that should interest or inspire faith in you.
Firstly, I do have the privilege of wearing this ridiculous hood and velvet tam.
because I did receive a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA
specializing in Psychoneuroendocrinology so that counts for something.
We hope. This insane get-up represents
the hope of my university that I would go out into the world wearing it
to try and do my education and my experience justice.
And second, someone had enough curiosity
what the Big *** Theory's Amy Farrah Fowler was like to invite me here.
In either or both cases I'm very honored to be giving today's commencement
speech. From this point forward,
from the point of commencement onward, your lives can be summed up
as being governed by the following three things and the decision
that you make about these three things, which I would like to focus on today.
Number one your ego, number two
your character and number three your sense of autonomy
direction and the true purposeful desires in life
Which I would refer to collectively as self actualization.
My perspective besides being that of someone with a PhD in Neuroscience
who was also a child actor and who is also now on the Big *** Theory,
is that of a young woman raised as the grandchild of immigrants to this
country. My grandparents never went to college.
One of them never fully mastered the English language. They were from families of
peddlers and peasants in Easter Europe and they came to America just before the 1940s
The reason they came here was to give my parents
and me the opportunities to be something, more than their countries
of origin would have permitted. I entered the world of academia at 19.
I lived there for 12 years and I emerged in
one piece, a highly processed piece - psychoanalytically-speaking -
and I am now raising two young sons while making my living in the
art, which I will refer to from here on simply as show business.
That's out of respect to be what I consider to be real artists who might be present. I consider myself
an employed actor. Show business and academia
are two very different worlds, but both can and will challenge one's
ego. Both can and will play significant pressure
on one's character. And both can and will introduce situations
and decisions that necessitate truth and honesty
for you to achieve self-actualization as an authentic member of society
successful however you choose to define success.
Both worlds I speak of, show business and academia
can bring out the best or the worst in you, in terms of ego, in terms of character
and both have the potential to pressure you to make choices
based not on your own desires but on our society's assessment of what is worth
In our culture these tend to be primarily money, fame and prestige.
External qualities, no doubt. These may not be things
you deem worthy and our challenge is to find what is worthy to us
and to make life what we want it to be. I'd
like to focus on ego, character and self-actualization a little more in
detail. These are the internal qualities that I have found have guided my
life and I hope that I can illustrate to you why. First,
ego, also known as your the best, your the worst.
Our lives hold the potential for us to either to fell incredibly
bad about ourselves or alternately, incredibly good about ourselves.
And sometimes it's some sort of combination.
In the world of acting that I was raised and again inhabit now,
we actors are constantly being told that we are to short, or too tall,
or too fat or not fat enough,too pretty, not pretty enough, too
confident, too meek, you get the idea! And while physical appearance
may not matter as much in academia as it does in show business I say
as much because sadly it still does matter, especially I found for women.
Academia holds a lot of possibility for general ego chaos.
I was far from the best student in my classes as an under-
graduate and as a graduate student, but I had to find what there was
to be proud of about myself. And that is the challenge of living in a
community of bright and ambitious people as you all live in.
No matter what industry you choose that is the challenge.
I encourage you to know your strengths. It's your responsibility and no one
else's to find them and to truly know them.
capitalize on them and make them even greater
support your ego and do not compare yourself to those that you perceive as better
than you. Do not batter your ego. Conversely,
it is a challenge to not look down on those who are struggling even if you
only do it in your head. I've been taught that thats still looking down on someone even
if you do it in your head. Temper your ego. Your life is
going to be about not being the best and not being the worst.
But being good enough and making yourself right-sized and that's
ego. Second, character
the end justifying the means. I entered
college of 19 after almost a decade in show business and I was pretty
certain upon entering college that there did not exist people more
vicious, more self-serving more cut-throat and more aggressive
than the agent, managers, actors, network executives, producers and lawyers that I
knew in my Blossom days. College and academia changed that
perception. Low and behold, people who behave as if the end
justifies the means are to be found in many realms of society
Indeed there are those in every field who will do anything to
get ahead, be it lying, cheating, stealing, coveting,
I think those are all the possibilities besides killing, right?
Now that you are leaving the cradle and the safety of college,
the opportunity is yours to solidify who you really want to be and what
values that you hold true. What will your character be?
And, what will people think about you and what will people say about you?
Will you be known as honest, fair, trustworthy
humble, generous, compassionate? It's up to you
I'm aware that it takes all types to make the world go round
I look to emulate the character traits I value in others
In turn, I hope that others will see things in me that they hope to pursue.
for themselves. It is in this way that we can truly make the world a
better together, person-by-person
in life. The means that you use to travel that road, your character
will be ultimately more meaningful, more impactful and more beautiful.
If you think ahead to the aspects of you that you want to be known
for and act accordingly with those no matter what. Thats character.
And finally what really matters
this self-actualization term. After I spent five
I was told by many well meaning people to do a lot of
things that they thought I should do. Do I another TV show right away I was told.
Go be on Broadway. Try and get into films. No, go to college.
Go to college back east. Go to college in LA, try and keep acting.
Apparently everyone not just my parents knew what was best for me.
People tried to convince me, not just my parents, that they knew
better than I did what my life should look like. Well
I had either enough intuition or rebelliousness or both
to pursue my desire to go to college and to study science. And thats what
I did. Once in college I did not always get As
and I did not always understand things the way my A-student colleagues did.
I was a very passionate motivated and organized student.
But I simply did not have what it took to get the top grades. This was very frustrating
and confusing because my parents had always told me that I was the smartest person in the world.
They told me I could do anything, could they have been wrong, were
they lying, don't answer that! I'd like to share one particularly
good instance of someone messing with my potential for healthy self-
actualization in graduate school. I struggled a lot with a certain
kind of interpretive analysis that neuroscience students have to be good at. I worked
very hard that I simply could not do it as intuitively and as
elegantly as most of my colleagues could. I was called
into one of our head professors offices. After I failed to pass
one of the three qualifying exams, that specifically required this type
of analysis. He was gravely concerned since I got
As all year long in my courses. And I passed the other two exams just fine.
exams just fine. But because I had failed to pass this one
he wanted to know why. I assured him that I was
a dedicated student, and that I had studied quite diligently which I had.
I simply did not understand how to execute the analysis that this
exam required. He proceeded to take a deep breath
and he told me very earnestly that as a young man he had wanted to
be a professional concert piano player. And he tried really hard
to be the best. He practiced and practiced and he kept at it faithfully.
But eventually he said someone had to break it to him that he just
couldn't cut it. And he would never be as great as the greats
I stared at him and I tried not to cry. But he wasn't done,
He added that he was simply trying to help me see
that maybe this neuroscience PhD wasn't what I was cut out for.
He added that "knew my background".
I figured this would was his way of saying he was a huge Blossom fan and had a Blossom hat and had Joey
Lawrence posters all over his walls. That's what I wanted to picture with this guy.
He was implying that I should give and go back to what we
already knew I could do. But that's not what I wanted to do.
I cried a lot that day and I cried a lot that week. And I
did the remediation work that my department assigned me, so that I could proceed with the next year of my
coursework. I ultimately finished my thesis with confidence,
with dignity, with excellent scholarship and with joy.
I knew what I wanted to do in my life and that professor did not.
I had what it took to do it. Maybe not his way, maybe not at the
top of my class or my field. But I had the ability to do it well.
and I did it. After completing my thesis and taking my
hood I became pregnant with our second son and I made the decision to
return to acting largely because the schedule allowed me more time and more
flexibility with our children than being a research professor would have.
I was told by pretty much everyone I knew that I was throwing away my degree.
I was told that it was foolish and I was told that I had wasted my time in grad
school, if this was how I chose to live my life. except one of my advisors
who said "what are your doing here? Get out!" Guess what?
I got to decide what to do with my life again.
And this time I had two people to consider and their lives are in my hands
That informed my decision and I don't regret any part of it now
I didn't waste my time by getting
this degree. It was a wonderful challenging journey. It changed me forever
and it made me the person I am today. It made me the mom I am
It made me the employed actor that I am today. I
may not be using my degree the way it's typically used. And I'm certain that my Neuroscience
department at UCLA never thought to include as possible career when
graduating: Playing a neurobiologist on a hit sitcom and providing as-needed
script and plot revision based on academic expertise.
The point that I want to make is that you get to choose your life.
In this great country, the family you come from, the language spoken
in the bedrooms of your house, the amount of money in your or your parents bank account
none of that determines what your life has to look like.
You get to live your life, however you want to
That qualifying exam that I failed had right answers and I could not figure them out.
But there are no right answers in how to live your life.
It's a series of decisions and lessons which all qualify you,
to become who you are as a person. And that is
self-actualization. I wanted to finish up with
something fun and something light. So, I figured let's pick something
Big-***-related, why not. I know its a little on the nose.
But I couldn't help notice that the three main characters on the Big *** Theory
Leonard, Sheldon and Penny can help us sum up ego,
character and self-actualization. Watch this.
Leonard: humble and sweet intellectual and passionate.
Leonard is comfortable not being the best while simultaneously being
confident that he is not the worst. His ego is intact, he is right-
sized. His ego is challenged. But he is right-sized.
Sheldon: Sheldon is tenacious and strong willed.
He rejects social mores and generally speaking tends to display
arrogance and distain towards most people,places and things.
to be around, yet he does try in his own way, to hold true
to some concept of decency and affection. Sheldon can use
some instruction in character new-ons perhaps in the realm of tact and discretion
and he is a great example of someone who's character is a work in progress,
as we all are. Penny: Playful and
spontaneous with an interest in engaging in things outside of her comfort zone.
She follows her heart. With the right tools, skills,
confidence and friends. One can enjoy life
and make choices that brings satisfaction and produce a self
that is truly authentic. and actualized.
The world is broken I can assure you of that,
in big ways and small ways. There is much work to be done.
You are the academic elite, a phrase I really wanted to
avoid using but I couldn't.
You have the potential to begin to repair this world. And if not you then who?
and, if not now then when?
This repair can only be achieved collectively by people with their egos
appropriately sized. Values honest and their compass always
set towards using wisdom, intuition and good intentions
as their foundations. I wish you all of these things
one-thousand fold. Get out there and show us how much you can
do for yourselves, for your community, and for your world.
Congratulations! I salute you, I thank you for attention.
Go Bruins!
(applause)
Many of you don't know that we had the privilege of having
dinner with Dr. Bialik last night. We sensed that there was a little
bit of apprehension because she wanted to make sure that she really had the
speech on the nose. I need to say that I've done
this before, I know this is your first time.
I can tell you that that was one of the most entertaining, honest, profound speeches I've ever
heard. So, thank you very much.